Mickey One

Like I knew this was gonna be a long night when I heard the west coast jazz opening. Penn obviously confused film making with Calvin Klein commercials. So, like Warren's in a tough spot--tough because he doesn't know what he did wrong--shades of Huntz hall being smacked in the head by Leo Gorcey--"Wha'd I do? Wha'd I do?" This causes the music to get louder and the camera to move jerkily, like my uncle's home movies. The puppet actors are forced to give us slabs of bad Brando, letting us know that ultimately the whole film is a waste of time. If I wanted to show angst and psychosis, I'd have taken camera and crew to the Motor Vehicle Bureau in Yonkers, and just alternated between the waiting dead, the agonizing number change on the electronic board and the sleepy indifference of the clerks. I wouldn't need no stinking music to scare or confuse. A half hour would be enough to send the audience screaming into the streets.

I had graduated Art School five years before this film was made, and agonized over predictable, gritty shots of litter and urban decay. It was "deja vu all over again!" There's a Ray Bradbury short story about a tourist in Mexico who sees an "interesting" crack in a wall of a house and asks the dweller to pose for a shot beside the crack...which he does by urinating.! "Mickey One" had a similar effect on me.

Thanks to AMC's Film Preservation series those of us who had missed the rare previous opportunities to view this out-of-print cult classic on television were recently afforded a cinematic pleasure of the highest order.

Everything about this film impressed me enormously - its startling New Wave-influenced editing and camera angles, its atmospheric noir lighting effects, its surrealistic mise en scene, its Kafkaesque paranoia and philosophical themes, and the incredibly convincing performance given by Warren Beatty in the title role. There isn't a dull shot or moment in the entire film, and some of its images and visual conceits (the automobile junk yard as existential metaphor, for instance) are breathtaking. That this artistically ambitious and ambiguous film ever got made and theatrically released in 1965 is a small miracle. Perhaps I'll think differently after the initial glow has worn off and I have a chance for a second viewing, but right now I'd rank Arthur Penn's Mickey One with such all time great thrillers as The Third Man and Touch of Evil.

Mickey One is a strange film about a man on the run and living on the edge. Warren Beatty takes this new name after his business manager Franchot Tone tells him the mob has a contract on his life. At first Beatty can't figure it out. But it gradually dawns on him that he's been living it up high on the hog with the mob's money, $20,000.00 dollars of it. When Tone informs him of the tab, Beatty decides to run.

He lives for years in obscurity, but he's a performer with a compulsive need for an audience. Soon he's working at a swank joint in Chicago owned by Hurd Hatfield and Jeff Corey. But too much attention could bring him to the attention of people who don't forget.

Mickey One is a strange almost Kafkaesque type movie. It comes considerably short of being a classic. Still it's an interesting work and it has its following.

One other role of note is that of comedian Teddy Hart who plays Beatty's new found agent in Chicago. Hart was the brother of lyricist Larry Hart had a good career as a second banana comic. He's the short fellow with the rubbery expressive face.

Mickey One doesn't make it to the top tier, still it's an interesting work.

Took a couple of viewings to feel comfortable about this mid 60's predecessor to the days ahead of psychedelic imagery. But alas, it finally sunk in. Penn & Co. used a ton of artistic metaphors and graphic symbolism to buttress this supposedly straightforward plot theme. Basically, it's about a paranoid comedian (Beatty) on the run from the mob in Detroit who ends up several stops later in the heart of Chi-town. Probably the accent is on paranoid rather than comedian because he's not terribly funny, especially by today's standards. Regardless, he goes to a few bars to check out other comics and the bug bites him again and he is subsequently coaxed into doing his stand-up routine again. Beatty's erratic, hyped-up demeanor grated on me from time to time, but I have to assume that Mr. Penn had intended his lead character to exhibit these manic symptoms to blend in with the madcap sequences of events that were taking place during the course of the film.

But his journey is fraught with fear of getting discovered by the mob boys. When he first arrives in Chicago, he wanders into a scrap yard where heavy machinery smash up and compact old autos, apparently a metaphor by Penn to parallel Beatty's fear of getting smashed up and compacted by the mob! He then wanders into a salvation type mission where he encounters a stuttering evangelist who quotes Scripture, sounding like a vocal fusion of Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd. This minute or so sequence is far funnier than Beatty's "Mort Sahl-ish" dry-witted one-liners.

He meets up with a loving and sympathetic female (A. Stewart) who tries her best to keep him from teetering into the brink. On one of their walks through the city, they encounter a "mute" madcap character (K.Fujiwara) who has put together a surrealistic concoction of a Spike Jones type amalgamation of horns, pianos, drums noises, et al. It eventually blows up on him, whereupon the Fire Dept. comes to extinguish the resulting conflagration. All his work seems lost at that point except for one small gadget which still manages to work. The "mute" is delighted in saving that last gadget and is applauded by Beatty and his girl. I interpreted that to be a metaphor for Beatty's condition and how he should react to it: Whatever can happen will happen and not to worry because you never know what the end result may be, especially if you keep plugging away! Beatty then tries to find the mob guys who want him, gets his butt whooped in the process, and then finally goes on stage, bandages and all, and basically says, "I ain't scared any more, so if you want me here I am!", the final redemptive moment in the film. The ensuing fadeout is appropriately poignant.

To omit praising the likes of Hurd Hatfield, Jeff Corey, Franchot Tone, Teddy Hart, and the aforementioned Alexandra Stewart would be remiss. Their contributions were very interesting, at minimum. However, the main kudos go to Beatty, Penn and, last but not least, to Stan Getz for his masterful tenor sax interpretations. Someone needs to DVD (new verb?) this important period piece. Should be required viewing for young film makers, even if they don't like the movie!

I have not watched many American films in the past few months. Even the good ones tend to be repetitive, not just in plot, but in style and technical aspects. An "art film" in this country seems simply to be a Hollywood script produced for less money. This goes for every era of American film.

So it is rare to find an American film with true aspirations towards originality. And now I see Mickey One. I heard about it quite a while ago, not long after I saw the second pairing of director Arthur Penn and actor Warren Beatty, the absolute masterpiece Bonnie and Clyde. That was some four years ago. Mickey One is not available on video, so I never really thought I would see it, nor did I really care; I was interested, but had not heard many good things about it (it's usually categorized as "pretentious" or an "interesting failure"). But then, about a month ago, I caught a snatch of it on AMC. Then, tonight, I come home from work, turn on the television, switch to AMC, and it is just about to begin. It was only 95 minutes long, so I sat down to watch it.

What I experienced was possibly the most unique American film I'd ever seen. I would cite a few possible influences of this film to describe it: it reminded me of Fellini, mainly 8 1/2, + Kafka + a very unique and difficult to identify style of humor, very sly. Many people who do see this film will probably dismiss it because of its confusing story, and admittedly, once the story makes sense, it doesn't equal up to all that much. I didn't mind that so much. Maybe the sum is not as great as its parts, but, boy, are those parts amazing! For one thing, the cinematography is amazing. The final scene, where Mickey One (Warren Beatty) confronts his fears in the form of an unrelenting, unblinking spotlight. The dialogue is also amazing, too, as well as the screenplay (at least for individual scenes). Take, for instance, the way Mickey's love interest is introduced: to escape a possible spy, he jumps out of his bathroom window onto a trampoline. He comes back to his apartment later to find a young woman sitting in his chair. "Who the heck are you?" "Your landlady said you were evicted. I gave her all my money, and it's dark outside. I can't go now!" I haven't seen that before. It's damned clever. Also, I've never in my life, in American film or elsewhere, seen such a clever use of speeding up the film. Sure, plenty of filmmakers use slow-motion as a filmic tool, but fast-motion, I've just never seen that before (possibly in silent film, but it is not the same).

The best part of the film happens to be almost completely separated from the rest of the film. A Japanese fellow who has appeared from time to time in the picture, who always sees Mickey and waves at him, reveals his magnum opus of modern art made from parts found it the junkyard. He calls it "Yes," and it is this profoundly weird and comical machine that smashes together trash can lids and pounds on piano keys. There are fireworks attached to it, which eventually make Yes burst into flames, which leads the fire department to put it out in a glorious blanket of what seems to be bubbles from bubble bath or dish soap. It's quite surreal, and quite amazing.

Seriously, if you are a fan of unique cinema, see Mickey One. 9/10. And Warren Beatty's great, too, as ought to be expected.